Friday, August 17, 2007

Someone posted at WFMU's Beware of the Blog the audio from a cassette tape found at a Goodwill store in Toledo, Ohio. It's a recording of a college student's 1978 interview with a 100-year-old woman. The second half of the interview gives a little more genealogical info, but see if you can figure out her identity with only these early clues:

Though not explicitly stated, it's apparent that she never married.

Her family came from New York and settled in Newton, Kansas, where she still lived in 1978.

Her father emigrated from Germany as a young man.

Based on these clues, I was able to figure out who she was using one free online resource and HeritageQuest Online census records. I didn't hear her last name mentioned on the tape, but her first name and the first names of her mother and siblings are given on the flip side, and they confirmed my hunch.

The first person to post the correct answer as a comment wins my undying admiration.

Five correct answers! Fortunately, I have plenty of undying admiration lying around the house.

Florence went blind in one eye, then the other, was flooded out of her home in 1965, and had to care for her ill siblings, but found time to make some serious cash in the stock market. Enough cash to establish The Florence Bessmer Foundation in 1979, which funded an addition to the Newton Public Library and still provides for library services for kids. They celebrate her birthday each year in the Bessmer Meeting Room.

I guess that, for the sake of any newbies reading this, we should explain how it was done.

I first searched in the SSDI for women who were born in 1877 or 1878, whose last residence was Newton, Kansas, who died in 1978 or later. I then searched the 1920 census for women in their 40s living in Harvey County, Kansas, who were born in New York. Florence Bessmer was the first name that popped up, and the only name that also appeared in the SSDI.

The Bessmer family's census entries in 1900 and 1910 confirmed the identification.